Posts Tagged ‘shock and awe’

The latter, titled “We’re All in This Mess Together*, is fairly self-explanatory,

DecommodificationIn order to preserve the spirit of gifting, our community seeks to create social environments that are unmediated by commercial sponsorships, transactions, or advertising. We stand ready to protect our culture from such exploitation. We resist the substitution of consumption for participatory experience.

The one from this year:

Radical Self-expressionRadical self-expression arises from the unique gifts of the individual. No one other than the individual or a collaborating group can determine its content. It is offered as a gift to others. In this spirit, the giver should respect the rights and liberties of the recipient.

Beyond the life you live, you have no “true” self—you are precisely what you do and think and feel. To create a community in which each of us can live life to the fullest, we must make it possible for all of us to pursue our dreams and be free and creative. Otherwise we’re cheating ourselves of each other’s potential, as well as our own. We must make our freedom by cutting holes in the fabric of this reality, by forging new realities which will, in turn, fashion us. Putting yourself in new situations constantly is the only way to ensure that you make your decisions unencumbered by the inertia of habit, custom, law, or prejudice — and it is up to you to create these situations.

Freedom only exists in the moment of revolution.

(radical self-expression)

For the lover speaks a different moral and emotional language than the typical bourgeois man does. The average bourgeois man has no overwhelming, smoldering desires. Sadly, all he knows is the silent despair that comes of spending his life pursuing goals set for him by his family, his educators, his employers, his nation, and his culture, without ever being able to even consider what needs and wants he might have of his own. Without the burning fire of desire to guide him, he has no criteria upon which to choose what is right and wrong for himself. Consequently he is forced to adopt some dogma or doctrine to direct him through his life. There are a wide variety of moralities to choose from in the marketplace of ideas, but which morality a man buys into is immaterial so long as he chooses one because he is at a loss otherwise as to what he should do with himself and his life. How many men and women, having never realized that they had the option to choose their own destinies, wander through life in a dull haze thinking and acting in accordance with the laws that have been taught to them, merely because they no longer have any other idea of what to do? But the lover needs no prefabricated principles to direct her; her desires identify what is right and wrong for her, for her heart guides her through life. She sees beauty and meaning in the world, because her desires paint the world in these colors. She has no need for dogmas, for moral systems, for commandments and imperatives, for she knows what to do without instructions.

(Decommodifaction)

I hadn’t intentionally set out to do a series of 10, it just fell out that way, and I like it.

Alchemy 2008: “Decommodify…or perish” setlist:

“We find we can do without immense quantities of goods…”

Placebo – protect me from what I want

Camper Van Beethoven – When I win the lottery

Bow Wow Wow – W.O.R.K.

– _

World Inferno Friendship Society – Tattoos Fade

L7 – American Society

The Partisans – Blind Ambition

Fischerspooner – Sick of TV

the Dresden Dolls – War Pigs

Circle Jerks – Live Fast, Die Young

Ryan Adams – To Be Young…

Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers – Affection

Gary Wilson – 6.4 = Makeout

Lords of Acid – Heaven is an Orgasm

“…we attempt tonight to present you with a picture of the era…drawn by those who revolt against some of the aspects of the hidden revolution.”

Mad Happy – Renegade Geeks

Menomena – Rotten Hell

I’ll try to work on this year’s playlist tonight .

*

Alchemy 2009: “Shlock and Awww…” setlist:

“Do you ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?”

*I loved this song and video in high school. Looking for that link sent me on a lovely little tour of nostalgia. Looking up eurotrash videos from my youth is a standard drunk and bored youtube exercise.

I still listen to their two hits:

and torture people with this one:

Can I just TELL you how much I wanted that blue hair? I sing this one:

I honestly, leading worship music on youth group mission trips to Africa and applying to Bible colleges, didn’t know what “gay” was, or “club kids,” or anything except I loved that garter belt, and shiny fabrics, and fast music and bright hair.

…so there was no conclave before the effigy burn, which I loved. There was a clearly defined perimeter, held very, very strongly. Sometimes there is a marked border of caution tape, usually just a ranger or few pacing back and forth, asking people to mind the invisible line. This effigy had a bright red line of lights and a good…dunno, I heard it was to be 50 people in matching t-shirts and berets, spaced at arms’ length making an actual human perimeter people could not get by. Not even fire safety people, in their astronaut suits, were allowed to enter the perimter around the effigy.

“The big explosions were 5 gal. of gasolene put into 10″ pipes with 1Lb of ffA black powder in the bottom mixed with about a tablespoon full of titanium added to ignite the gas cloud.”

Though we on the perimeter were allowed to turn around and watch, once the air raid signal indicated as such, I held my perimeter position for the most part (I was asked to keep an eye on the crowd and not let anyone through, so that is what I did.) and thoroughly enjoyed seeing and hearing people’s reactions. I had a nice mix of “virgins” and old-timers in front of me, both parties were shocked and awed. It was utterly delightful, watching their faces – epitome of “jaw dropping.” People’s minds were buhlown. It was awesome! All of it. Alchemy is awesome.